JULY 5, 1999:
There was a telling Chemical Brothers anecdote in the March 1999 issue of
Britain's club-culture monthly the Face. That issue's installment of
"Objects of Affectation," a column about club memorabilia of years past, was
about amyl nitrate, or "poppers," a drug that dilates blood vessels, increasing
skin sensitivity and inducing a brief but powerful head rush. A long-time
staple of the gay club scene, amyl -- inhaled from a capsule, or in liquid form
through a soaked cigarette -- became the drug of choice at London's fierce
Sunday Social Club, where the Chemical Brothers did a career-making residency
in the summer and fall of 1994.

They were still spinning as the Dust Brothers then, borrowing the name --
without permission -- from LA hip-hop producers Mike Simpson and John King. But
their signature style was already in evidence. As Gareth Grundy noted in
"Objects of Affectation," amyl's one-minute rush "dictated the music policy.
The more belligerent the track . . . the louder the response.
'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys and the Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows' worked
best."

That's early Chemical Brothers, nutshelled -- a soundtrack for a fleeting
high. From their 1992 single "Song to the Siren" on up to 1997's Dig Your
Own Hole (Astralwerks), it was all about peaks and climaxes, with every
sample advancing the payoff, driving straight to the hoop. You can ID the
elements of a signature smackdown like "Block Rockin' Beats" as they stack up
-- a thumb-wars bass riff, a Schooly D boast, funk-factory percussion, fire
alarms crying disco inferno, the "Woo!" from Frankie Cutlass's (1994 boriqua
spot-rocker) "Puerto Rico," and on and on. But the individual pieces don't
really matter. "Block Rockin' " was an exercise in cumulative thrills; the
Brothers took the rules of hip-hop break-extension (essentially, bite the
section of the record that really rocks the bells, rinse, repeat) and got
positively fanatical with them, piling peaks upon peaks.

Back in the day, those same principles of construction allowed pioneering
hip-hop break miners to redeem countless artists -- from Billy Cobham to Billy
Squier to Billy Joel -- whose works appeared hopelessly undope to the untrained
ear. Let's take Joel as an example: the Piano Man's "Stiletto" is wack. But
after '89, when Marley Marl hooked up a drum loop from "Stiletto" on Kool G.
Rap's "Road to the Riches," Joel -- or, more accurately, a few transitory
seconds of his back catalogue -- became de facto cool. (Now unscrupulous
hip-hop shops even charge new-wax prices for thrift-store copies of 52nd
Street.)

The Chemicals just applied this black-rockin' approach to acid house and
late-'80s British indie rock. The end result was a run on hip-hop's infinite
jackpots potent enough to zap even guitar-music loyalists with the bop gun.
They may not have been the first DJs to stumble on it, but epiphanous shit is
epiphanous shit, and in spreading the gospel first to London clubland and then
to the world, the Brothers -- formerly Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, dweeby
Manchester University history majors -- became as money as Billy Joel.

Last year, the Brothers released a mix CD, Brothers Gonna Work It Out
(Astralwerks). Like Prodigy mix maestro Liam Howlett's more recent
Dirtchamber Sessions (XL Recordings), the disc was a tip of the cans to
old-school hip-hop, mixing Chemical rarities with old Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez and
Jimmy Castor joints. But Work It Out also saw the Brothers getting back
in touch with their house-music roots, shuffling in vintage Chicago acid tracks
and growing all misty over epoch-defining nightspots like Manchester's
Hacienda.

With their third full-length, Surrender (Astralwerks), the Brothers
push deeper into the same groove. There's an occasional nod to hip-hop -- the
Daft Punk-y "Music: Response" quotes part of Nicole's Timbaland-produced hit
"Make It Hot," and "Hey Boy Hey Girl" abstracts a piece of Rockmaster Scott and
the Dynamic Three's "The Roof Is on Fire." But the dominant black beat on the
album is house's resolute 4/4, and most of the "dance" tracks are robo like
Kraftwerk, and disco like 14-carat coke spoons.

Fueled by ecstasy and acid house, Britain's 1989 Summer of Love was itself a
retro phenomenon -- the music came from gay clubs and warehouse parties in New
York and the American Northeast, but the scene lifted imagery, ideals, and
fashion tips straight from the 1960s. Accordingly, the Brothers' field trip to
rave's ground zero quickly veers into swirling psychedelia. Surrender
time-tunnels back to the '80s to dig for beats, but like Austin Powers, it
looks to the '60s for its mojo. A song title like "The Sunshine Underground"
says it all. Or check the first single -- the infectiously derivative "Let
Forever Be" throws a shimmying bass line and some DJ Shadow-ish snare-drum
cartwheels under a Noel Gallagher vocal and a droning melody line that could be
Mellotron cello or Jimmy Page sawing ax. Orchestral-pop eccentrics Jonathan
Donahue and Mercury Rev played on Dig's prescient closer, "The Private
Psychedelic Reel"; here, Donahue does a tender duet with a battle droid on
"Dream On," and hazy synth sounds pour down around him like purple rain.

The loveliest analog instrument on Surrender is the voice of Mazzy
Star's Hope Sandoval, who sings on "Asleep from Day." For a minute, the
freakin' and peakin' gives way to a tranquil, chiming folkscape, full of fake
plastic trees and little fluffy clouds. The drum machine lays out until halfway
through, and Sandoval gets all elliptical, murmuring about the moon, and her
friends, and their beautiful eyes. She's subbing for Beth Orton, who acted as
chill-out chanteuse on the first two Chemicals records before striking out on
her own. But Sandoval's style, at once hair-raisingly intimate and
somnambulantly detached, actually serves the Brothers' smoked-out sound better
-- whereas Orton was always waking up with a hangover, Sandoval has yet to
touch ground.

All this swirling trip rock rubs up against tracks like "Got Glint?" and
"Influenced," some of the danciest music this "dance" act has ever made. The
juxtaposition speaks to the Brothers' uncertainty about the future of the funk
and their place in it. Maybe they should be worried. Fatboy Slim's got more
hooks than Sam Jackson has Kangols, and his own rave-nostalgia trip, "Praise
You," has already done more business than Surrender's ever gonna do.

Meanwhile, a clutch of less inspired beat-flunkies have jacked the Brothers'
sound wholesale, turning it into something its originators would undoubtedly
prefer to leave behind. But frogs like Daft Punk and the Respect posse do this
nu-house-cum-disco thing far better. So do Underworld -- their
Beaucoup Fish (JBO/V2) is the best British dance record of '99, a
Daydream Nation for ravers coming down in a planetarium and governed by
almost tantric cycles of suspension and gratification. It savors thrills
the Chems' dust-ups barely even save.

And though it's obvious by now that punching up the Mantronix-on-steroids roar
of Big Beat is Column A/Column B cake to the Brothers, their departures from
that formula feel a little familiar too. Most of Surrender's psychedelic
reels are rethreads: Gallagher and Donahue again, Sandoval filling in
for Orton. "Let Forever" is such a ripoff of the Brothers' own "Setting Sun,"
they should jump back and sue themselves.

Besides, the wayback-machine music that rules Surrender can be only a
temporary refuge -- you can't go house again. Club life is a young man's game,
dropping out a young person's pursuit. Surrender dwells, ambivalently,
in that space where losing your mind/finding yourself in a field at midnight
gives way to harsh dawn, to a reality that goes day-to-day and not
beat-to-beat, to getting a job and ordering a "Beat Any Drug Test!" kit from
the back of Rolling Stone.

It's all there in Michel Gondry's eye-popping, space-bending video for "Let
Forever Be," in which a make-up-counter salesgirl hoofs back and forth between
real life and the surreal variety-show set of her dreams, where she's just
another clone in the chorus line. The clip's acid-flashback subtext might as
well be spelled out in subtitles, but it neatly encapsulates Surrender;
like their bewildered video stand-in, the Brothers are between worlds. As
Trouble Funk once commanded, they've dropped the bomb on the white boy. But now
they're at a loss for a deft segue to the next kick. It's like Beth Orton sang
at the end of Dig Your Own Hole -- where do they go from here?